Katie Holmes' Creepy Magazine Cover Story

Katie Holmes is on the cover of Harper's Bazaar this month. But from the interview and the situation surrounding it, maybe they should rename the magazine Harper's Bizarre.

For one thing, the "story" that accompanies the pictures is so short that it might as well be a caption. It contains nearly no information, just platitudinous answers that are vague and sound like they were memorized before delivery.

The creepy part: The story was "styled" by Victoria Beckham, aka Posh Spice, wife of David Beckham. The Beckhams have apparently been assigned to Katie and Tom Cruise as their best friends. Victoria Beckham, who is not a great singer, makes her debut as a stylist according to the magazine's contributor's page. Maybe this is her new career.

Coincidentally, Victoria Beckham is the only person quoted in the Harper's Bizarre story about Katie, other than Katie herself. Talk about keeping it in the inner circle.

Sarah Bailey, the magazine's deputy editor-in-chief, wrote the story. Beckham, by the way, was photographed back in September at Bailey's New York birthday party. In other words: The fix has been in on this one for a while.

Yeesh.

Katie does divulge something interesting, however. She confirms that she and Tom are living full-time with his two adopted kids from his marriage to Nicole Kidman, as well as with his sister, her kids and his mother. In other words, Katie Holmes, 28, married just a few months, is surrounded by Tom's family at all times.

At the same time as this weird article in Harper's Bazaar, the Cruises also appear in Hello! magazine in Britain. In an orchestrated photo essay, Tom and Katie appear with Connor and Isabella as if they are a happy, nuclear family. Absent from this scenario is Kidman, who is legally the mother of these older children.

In Harper's Bazaar, Katie says: "I have a husband and children that I adore." In Hello!, it's noted that the children are living with Tom and Katie full-time, and that Nicole is in touch with them by cell phone and via an Internet camera. Something is not right with this picture, folks.

And by the way, would Katie like to make a movie with Tom? She lays it out for Bailey in language that could only come from a press release: "He's the biggest movie star ever. ... It would just be a real honor."

It's also an "honor" being a stepmother, and Katie is very "grateful" to be married to Tom, etc.

Reading Bailey's story, especially in tandem with the Hello! piece, is very sad. It's especially of concern that Holmes' parents and family — people who seemed to be incorruptible as far as Hollywood goes — have apparently conceded at every level.

Their daughter is now a robot, surrounded by other robots. It is all, as Katie would say, "amazing."

What doesn't track at all is that Katie used to give funny, articulate interviews before she met Cruise. They are all over the Internet, for movies like "Pieces of April" and "The Singing Detective," as well as when she was on "Dawson's Creek."

When I met her in April 2005 at the Broadway premiere of "Steel Magnolias," Holmes was relaxed and funny.

Compare her Harper's Bazaar interview with one she gave in 2003 to writer Jeff Otto for IGN.com. It's hard to imagine this exchange now:

Whitney Houston was not all smiles over the weekend at a private party for the NBA All-Star Game.

Houston came to the Budweiser Select/Sprite sponsored dinner for Jay-Z and LeBron James with singer Ray J (he's Brandy's brother). But onlookers said Whitney wouldn't pose for pictures and arrived around 11 p.m., missing the dinner part of the evening.

Whitney probably wasn't smiling because Ray J's ready steady Kim Kardashian, daughter of the late O.J. Simpson defender-then-accuser Robert Kardashian, was also in attendance.

The tabloid world suggests that Kim and Ray J have made a non-guild sanctioned film together.

You could joke that the St. Tropez "diet" would be just piña coladas and diamonds, but it's really a doctor-approved regimen.

Not only that, "The Saint-Tropez Diet" — here's a book natch — is about to replace the South Beach Diet and whatever came before that to be the new in deal in Hollywood.

The book, written by Apostolos Pappas and Marie-Annick Courtier, a chef, was already included in the Grammy Award gift bags. This weekend it will be featured at Premiere magazine's Oscar lounge in Hollywood.

The diet is said to focus on "high amounts of omega-3s, vitamins and anti-oxidants."

Ray Evans, the songwriter who, with partner Jay Livingston, authored Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa," is dead at age 92. Evans and Livingston had many memorable hits including "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)" and the theme song to "Mr. Ed," of all things.

They also wrote the Christmas classic "Silver Bells" for a Bob Hope movie, and the Andy Williams hit "Dear Heart." Not bad, huh?

Their era of songwriting craft is long over, but they will each be remembered years from now when we're trying to sing along to "SexyBack."